I should preface this by saying that I played the Angry Birds game on my phone for a very long time. It may be true that I spent too much time with it, but now that the expected Angry Birds Movie is here, I am suddenly less ashamed of all the wasted time.
Generally, a loud and fluttering animated adventure such as this contains some sort of substance to prevent its older audience – the parents – from succumbing to boredom or tedium. Though there are certainly some laugh out loud moments thrown in here, with other kid’s movies like Frozen and Zootopia out there, it seems that Birds is an exception.
In the game, the bird’s anger is engendered after a group of pigs steal their eggs. The plot of the movie outlines this idea, kind of, but what we really want to see are the birds stream and screech through the air and come crashing down on some sorry pigs. Honestly, who wants to know an angry bird’s life story? But because a full length feature can’t possibly be filled by only this type of senseless action, the makers of Birds took bits and pieces of other animated pictures and threw them into the nest.
The story follows the fowl named Red (the generic bird in the game). The film opens with him free running through the forest with an egg under his arm like a football; he swings on vines, falls off mountains, leaps across branches, and smashes his giblets during the exciting exposition. Unfortunately, it is obvious that the film will not be able to maintain this level of energy. It turns out that Red is a party clown, and he was running late. After the father of the hatch-day boy lays into him, Red’s short fuse gets the best of him; the law intervenes and then sentences him to anger management class.
Here, Red meets the other characters from the game. There’s Bomb (Danny McBride), whose name explains his purpose, Chuck (Josh Gad, who voiced Olaf in Frozen), a yellow speed demon with little patience and a tiny attention span, and Terrence, a ginormous red bird whose form of communication consists of groans. We also meet the main female character, the game’s destructive white flier named Matilda (Maya Rudolph), a timid creature who will eventually expose her inner assertiveness.
Meanwhile, we learn of Red’s orphan childhood, which consisted of ridicule and torment from the other birds due in large part to his massive dark eyebrows. His skeptic approach towards life doesn’t help him out later in life as the others continue to see him as an outsider. He lives on the corner of the island’s beach, isolated from the community village.
Things will worsen for our hero after the arrival of two loud-mouthed pigs. While the other birds are with the porkers, mesmerized by the existence of another creature and entertained by their peace-offerings (which includes a slingshot), Red investigates, and is horrified when he figures out why the pigs are really there: they’re going to steal the island’s eggs – AKA their children – and eat them.
That’s pretty dark stuff for a film aimed at children, but this is the route the creators decided to take. Perhaps what’s worse than the bullying, discrimination, and kidnapping is the absence of the godlike creature known as Mighty Eagle (Peter Dinklage). Red believes in the Eagle, whereas the other kids do not. Their parents taught them better.
The fans of the game finally get what they came to see when the other birds take Red as their leader and go after the pigs. With the slingshot provided by the porkers, the bird population finally reaches into their inner anger, and fling themselves into the piggy village, taking down buildings on the way. The only things missing are the numbers above the destruction.
Perhaps the filmmakers were actually trying to say something when the birds finally accept Red. Maybe they did, or tried to do what Inside Out did for sadness: encourage kids to accept their feelings. In this case, accept their anger. But that’s probably a stretch; a feeble attempt to make something out of nothing.
